


Two World Collided

by storieswelove



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Canon Compliant, Friendship, Little bit of angst, M/M, little bit of happy ending, seriously just like a lot of best friend feels, seriously like melancholy but with good things at the end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-04
Updated: 2020-01-04
Packaged: 2021-02-24 15:47:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22120411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/storieswelove/pseuds/storieswelove
Summary: “Do you want to tell me about Stevie?” he asks quietly.***Patrick wonders, not for the first time, how David and Stevie pulled off this weird, beautiful friendship, and if that means that one day, there might be hope for him and Rachel.
Relationships: Patrick Brewer/David Rose, Stevie Budd & David Rose
Comments: 30
Kudos: 210





	Two World Collided

**Author's Note:**

> I have abnormally strong feelings about making friendships work after complicated romantic situations, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the Stevie and Rachel parallels. In particular, Patrick’s loss of friendship, and the hope that Stevie’s existence has the potential to give him. 
> 
> Friendship and love forever, folks. 
> 
> Title from a cover of [“Never Tear Us Apart” by Paloma Faith](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCYtesyE7OA).

_Stevie is taking me to a spa hotel_. It’s a relief when Patrick looks down at his phone to a new text from David. Three days with nothing more than curt messages confirming Patrick will watch the store, and he was starting to feel like he might crack. 

Patrick manages small talk for a while, and is rewarded with the hilarious imagery of David and Stevie in a tacky hotel honeymoon suite, decorated with rose petals. _Absolutely incorrect,_ is what David says with an accompanying photo of a bathtub with faux Roman columns in the center of the room. Patrick calls the front desk and orders them a bottle of red wine, as a peace offering, and a suggestive note, as a joke; maybe if he pretends things are normal, he’ll manifest it into reality. 

The irony of the situation doesn’t escape him: they’re in this mess because Patrick couldn’t talk to his ex, and somehow David’s ex is the only person keeping him together. 

Patrick wonders, not for the first time, how the fuck David and Stevie pulled this off, this weird, beautiful friendship. But he can’t think about it for too long, because the clawing, aching reality that he might have lost both David and Rachel for good is too much to handle on a lonely Tuesday night. 

* * *

After David dances, sweaty and exhausted, he and Patrick finally sit down on the old, sagging stockroom couch and clear the air. 

Patrick tells him about Rachel, and their talk after the barbecue. It went as well as could be expected, he says. 

“She was unnecessarily understanding. She always is,” says Patrick. He sounds sad. “But she needs more time with it. Of course she does. I needed thirty years.” His laugh is hollow.

So, the friendship ball is in her court. 

David, in turn, offers up stories about Sebastien, and the birthday clown, and the countless other people who broke his heart. They avoid the obvious for as long as possible; Patrick is the one to rip off the bandage.

“Do you want to tell me about Stevie?” he asks quietly. 

“What do you...what do you want to know?” David’s voice trembling a little. He’s afraid that this fragile thing he’s been able to maintain, a best friend and a boyfriend who actually _like_ each other, who see the other as an asset and not a threat, is about to crumble. He wants to believe it’s sturdy, that he’s done _this_ the right way for once, but all he can picture is a house of cards, and Patrick’s question is the beginnings of a storm. He’d sooner make a career as Roland’s personal shopper than let himself lose Stevie, but after a week without Patrick, he realizes the alternative stings just as much. If this is what loving people is like, he thinks, love can suck it. He’s exhausted. 

“David,” Patrick says, half laugh and half whine, like he can read his mind, like he can’t believe _this_ is what David is worried about. It calms him. “She’s clearly, like, the only person as important to you as Alexis. And I know you dated, and you’re still friends, and I don’t know...I thought maybe you wanted to talk about it?” Patrick’s face is open and scared, and David is reminded suddenly of the same look three months ago, when he’d asked if David still wanted to be _with_ Stevie and Jake. It does nothing to help his nerves. 

“There’s nothing there anymore,” David says quickly, voice pitching up, the creeping panic he felt a minute ago slipping back in. _Almost_ . He _almost_ made it out of today unscathed. 

“No, I know, I know.” Patrick stills him with a hand on his arm. His heart rate starts to steady again. Patrick is quiet for a few seconds. “Seeing Rachel last week, I realized how much I missed her.” 

David can feel his eyebrows flying up to his hairline. They literally _just_ —how is this—he opens his mouth to say something, anything——

“Not like that,” Patrick says, lifting up his hand in a ‘stop’ motion, halting David’s thoughts before they can run too wild. “David, she was my _best_ friend. We spent all of our time together for more than a decade. Our friendship always worked, even when the romance...” A tiny, frustrated whine escapes the back of Patrick’s throat, and David thinks he might crack from the pain his can’t save his partner from. “I lost my best friend, and I don’t know if I’m going to get her back.” 

“Oh.” David lets it sink in. In all the times he’d worried about losing Patrick this past week, it had never occurred to him that Patrick had lost someone too. Was he an asshole for not realizing it? He feels like one. He thinks again about losing Stevie; it makes him feel physically ill. And Patrick was just _living_ like that? Oh my _god_. 

David lets out the breath he didn’t realize he was holding. He owes him the truth. And Stevie was right — Patrick wasn’t going to run. 

“When we moved here, I had literally no one. Alexis and I hadn’t spent more than a few days together in years, and every single person I thought was actually my friend disappeared with our money.” He chokes on the emotion, but plows through. “I’d, um, been lonely for as long as I could remember, but at least, in New York, I could pretend, sometimes, that I wasn’t?” 

The intervening years hadn’t quite kicked the sting of those first few months, when his complicated feelings for Stevie had not been helped by the desolate loneliness he could no longer cover up with drugs and group outings, courtesy of his AMEX Black Card. He takes a steadying breath through his nose, and wills the tears not to come. He’s cried too damn much this week. 

“Stevie was a fucking a lifeline. Everyone in New York sucked up to me for my money, and suddenly here I was with nothing, and she gave me shit but also wanted to spend time with me? It was a lot.” He smiles. 

“You know how you’re always asking about my seemingly endless closet? Well, I obviously _do not_ have enough space for my clothes in the motel room. Especially not with Alexis’s sixteen thousand pairs of jean shorts,” he says with an eye roll. “Um, Stevie saw me having meltdown about selling my clothes, a few weeks after we moved here. So she took me to the honeymoon suite and made a deal with me that I could keep them there if she could borrow whatever she wanted. It was the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me.” 

Patrick smirks, like he can’t help giving David a little shit. Maybe he can’t. “Even nicer than a total stranger getting you grant money for your business?” 

David bites back a laugh, and looks at Patrick. “Mmmm,” he says, nodding. “Stevie thought I was gay? So. The nicest thing anyone who _wasn’t_ trying to sleep with me has ever done.” 

Patrick throws his head back, laughing. David nudges him with his shoulder and keeps going. 

“She was just so _nice_.” He snorts. “Which probably tells you everything you need to know about literally _everybody_ in my life up until that point, if Stevie raised the bar for niceness.” He twists his mouth. He’s never talked about this, not even with Alexis. “I kept talking myself out of it, because I had _literally_ one friend in the world at that point, and I am notorious for fucking things up, but then we got really high one day —“ 

“— oh, like the day you called and left me seventeen voicemails?” 

“Okay, it was not _seventeen_. But yeah. Whatever. Fine. I get frisky when I’m high.” He throws up his hands in halfhearted indignation in the face of Patrick’s smirk. “Are you happy?” 

“I’m so sorry, continue,” he says, waving his hand at David to proceed. 

“That’s it. She was nice to me and I was stoned.” 

“And she was really hot, and you were really horny?” Patrick’s smirk has turned into a full shit-eating grin. 

David laughs out loud for the first time in days. “Yeah. Yep. That too.” 

He’s quiet for a minute, and it slips out unbidden, stomping down whatever levity Patrick had secured for them. “I’m sorry. I know it’s hard. Being with me, sometimes. I know I’m fucked up. I have a lot of...baggage, or whatever.” 

“Hey,” says Patrick softly. “C’mere.” He wraps his arms around David, and the ancient couch squeaks from the movement. “It’s been a long week. This week was hard. But being with you is _not_ hard.” Patrick plants a kiss on his neck and mumbles into it. “I missed you so much, David.” 

David swallows hard. “I missed you too.”

* * *

David has a gift. It has not escaped Patrick’s notice that his boyfriend can find a reason, any time, any place, to touch or be touched by Patrick. This afternoon, he’s even managed to turn a nasty poison oak rash into an excuse. 

That’s how Patrick finds himself in Ray’s tiny bathroom, drained from a full-day seminar and two-hour drive each way, rubbing cortisone cream on David’s face. The rash is finally starting to look better. 

“At least mine wasn’t this bad,” David says, holding up his phone so Patrick can see a mirror selfie from Stevie, sleeves rolled up so that both swollen forearms are exposed. She’s flipping off the camera with the empty hand. He’s smiling the fond smile he reserves for when she isn’t around to see, lest she harass him for it. Patrick loves that smile—it’s the same one that gets directed at him, when he’s lucky. 

“Did you love her?” Patrick blurts it out before he can stop himself. He’s _exhausted_ from the week, from eight hours of dry numbers talk, from twelve days straight without so much as a half-day off, and it just comes tumbling out of him. The sleep deprivation, and the clawing desperation to finally tell David he loves him, melted together into _this_. He feels the heat creeping up his neck immediately. But he can’t take it back now. 

“W—what?” David’s voice is high, almost shrill. 

Well, he’s already put his foot in it. He may as well keep going. “Stevie. Did you love her? When you were, you know…,” he trails off, balling his fists to stop himself from making a rude hand gesture. 

David is quiet for a minute; Patrick’s chest starts to tighten. “No, I didn’t. But...I think she was the first person in a long time I thought maybe I could?” 

He almost says it then, the desperation to tell David worse than ever. It’s been a month since it hit him, and now the words are starting to hit back. He’s going to have to do it soon, before he cracks. David clearing his throat pulls him out of his spiral. 

“I’ve um, only said ‘I love you’ three times.”

Patrick is surprised. David hasn’t had many relationships last even a few months. “Like to three partners?”

“No, like...” He buries the unaffected side of his face in a hand. “Never mind.” 

_What?_

“David, what?” 

“I’ve only said ‘I love you’ three times period, okay?” 

“What?” _What?_ David had skirted around the topic before, but Patrick hadn’t thought... 

“I’m sorry.” David’s voice is small. 

“What are you apologizing for?” 

“Nothing, nevermind. Are you done applying that stuff? I need food.” 

* * *

“How did you do it?” The door has barely closed behind Stevie when Patrick asks the question. 

“What?” David says absentmindedly, locking the door and walking back to the display table to keep cleaning. Patrick looks wistful. 

“How did you and Stevie stay friends?”

They’d spent the last hour splitting a bottle of red wine with Stevie, while David meticulously rearranged the display that his sister, the _disgusting fucking barbaric animal_ , and her nasty boyfriend wrecked with their vile fooling around. At least Ted had the decency and wherewithal to pay for the damages to the bathroom. David’s head is still playing out the graphic ways he can get back at Alexis, and it takes him a second to process Patrick’s question. His hand stills over a bottle of body milk; he looks up at his boyfriend. 

“What do you mean?” 

The pained look on Patrick’s face reminds David of their night in Stevie’s apartment, asking David if he was still pining for her and Jake, a combination of vulnerability and fear that Patrick rarely let anyone see. 

“You and Stevie. I watch you two sometimes and I just — I wish I could figure that out with Rachel.”

“Where is this coming from?” David asks softly. Patrick is quiet for a minute, absentmindedly rubbing his ring finger with his right hand. 

“I guess I just miss her. I see you and Stevie and I wonder...I wonder if Rachel and I can ever get there.” Patrick’s laugh comes out bitter. It makes David’s heart clench. 

He chews on the side of his mouth while he figures out what to say. “I mean, you’ve seen us together. We were either going to be best friends, or hate each other for the rest of our lives. There was no other option.” It’s a rare moment of frank emotional honesty for him. “I wouldn’t have...any of this, without her.” He gestures vaguely around the store, and at Patrick. 

“Yeah,” Patrick mumbles, smiling a little. He’s still worrying his finger. 

“Hey,” David says softly. “Why don’t you text her? She might, um, appreciate an olive branch.” 

Patrick looks hard at him for a few seconds with _those_ eyes, before he nods slowly. Without another word, he picks up a bottle of body milk and helps David with the display. 

* * *

Patrick is bone tired. Regular _Cabaret_ rehearsals, secret _Cabaret_ rehearsals, all while running a business means he hasn’t had a minute to catch up in nearly a month. And that’s without considering the emotional upheaval of finally coming out to his parents. 

With David working double time at the store to cover for Patrick’s missed time, they have exactly enough energy to crawl back to his apartment at night, microwave something from the freezer, shower, and collapse into bed. 

Patrick is too tired, it seems, to actually sleep. The worst kind of tired. And his brain won’t stop spinning. The lights are off, but David’s breathing hasn’t evened out yet. Patrick turns on his side to face him. 

“I texted Rachel,” he says. He feels, more than sees, David turn toward the sound of his voice.

“Did she answer?” 

“She did. We’ve been talking, a little. The last couple days. I told her, um, about my parents.” 

David kisses his shoulder, and Patrick can feel him smiling against it. “I’m proud of you. I’m—I’m happy for you.” 

“Thank you, David.” 

“Mmm mmm, nope. You did this all on your own.” 

Patrick is hovering on the edges of sleep when David speaks again. 

“What got you thinking about her?” 

“Hmmm?”

“What um, got you thinking of Rachel? You asked, a few weeks ago. Right before your birthday.”

Patrick scrubs his face with his hands. “Oh, it’s just been an emotional few months, I guess. I’ve been thinking a lot about, you know, before.”

David kisses his head, snuggling up tighter. Patrick thinks about the black velvet box hidden in a backpack David will never pick up, bag already packed with all the nonperishables. He’s had marriage on the brain for months, long before his surprise party. Thinking about marriage, inevitably, meant thinking about Rachel. Coming out to his parents had been the last push he needed to reach out to her again. 

If meeting David had been a symphony when you didn’t know instruments existed, talking to Rachel again was a lullaby you’d forgotten your mom used to sing. He had really fucking missed her. 

He was done hiding pieces of his life from people he loved. He’d even told Rachel about the rings. Best friends are supposed to be involved in your big life moments, he’d realized. 

So, the next time they had extra dance rehearsals, Patrick had a very important question for Stevie.

**Author's Note:**

> All my love and thanks to [helvetica_upstart](https://archiveofourown.org/users/helvetica_upstart/), who is the only person I trust to help me word vomit my David + Stevie feelings. 
> 
> Come say hi on [Tumblr @ storieswelove](storieswelove.tumblr.com)!


End file.
